Archive for the ‘Ford Falcon’ tag

Ask any car guy to name a collectible Ford from the 1960s, and chances are good the Falcon won’t be the first model to roll off his tongue. As the brand’s entry-level compact offering, they weren’t generally viewed as collectible, meaning that relatively few soldier on today.

Perhaps absence really does make the heart grow fonder, because this 1965 Ford Falcon hardtop, for sale on Hemmings.com, forced us to take a second (and even third) look. It’s not restored to original condition, but instead is built as a tastefully executed period hot rod, complete with a warmed-over 289 bolted to a four speed manual transmission. The Magnum 500 wheels off a later Ford model are a nice touch, too, and give the car a more dignified look than aftermarket alternatives. Best of all, perhaps, is that it’s not priced like a restored muscle car. From the seller’s description:

I bought this 1965 Ford Falcon Hardtop from the original Family that purchased the car new in 1965 in Miami. I have the original window sticker, all the documents from the sale, a handwritten log in pencil from the first oil change until it was restored to a performance level, in 1988. I bought it on eBay in October 2006. I recognized the car from the town were I used to work in Miramar, Florida. Back in 1988, I was a Police Patrolman. I stopped the owner for gunning the accelerator down University Dr. on a Sunday morning. Turns out he was adjusting the kick-in secondaries of the manual carburetor. The car was freshly restored and built to hi-performance levels. The owner, was a Snap-on tool truck franchise dealer. My estimates of the huge pile of receipts that he gave me puts his restoration cost at about $15K + in 1988 money. Later I invested another $20K, I have the receipts. This is a no body damage, no rust repair original panels, glass, trim car. I did not see the car again for ten years.

In 1998, ten years later, I saw the owner (wife) driving the car, I was a motorcycle cop then. I did not recognize the Falcon because the paint faded due to a bad chemical mix of the paint. The owner stopped at fed-ex and I was invited to sit in it and look at the car, I loved it. Never saw it again until, 2006 when it showed up on eBay. I called the owners and asked them if they remembered me and they said, “of course.” I drove up to see the car as they moved 150 miles north. I bid on the car to win it, knowing I would never see one this straight ever again. I have the full eBay ad printed out in my documentation. I brought it home and started the new restoration. I did not expect to drop $20K over the next two years. Since the Falcon ran so good, all I needed to do is make it look good again too. And I needed to convert it to a manual shift car, which I did first. Then I media blasted all of the front suspension parts and repainted them with zero-rust semi-mat paint, once piece at a time. I removed the dirty factory under coating using mineral spirits and a heat gun, to reveal factory fresh batch-paint (a blend of left over colors that looks beige, Ford fresh). And no rust at all. Took about two weeks of laying on my back removing that stuff, but it looks great now.

I removed the engine and did the engine bay, then the visual restoration of the engine, using Doug’s ceramic headers. All the parts were detailed and re installed. Then I moved to Central Florida Coast and continued the restoration full time for two years. I sent the car for paint at New Dimension Racing in Melbourne, Florida. They did the strip-to-metal, refinishing inside and out, and included the FX hood that I removed, but still have, with the receipts, of course, at a cost of $8,500 in 2009, all original colors. There was no body work needed, hood, trunk, doors, glass, trim all removed, and reinstalled with new gaskets. When the car came back, I dyno-matted the inside floors and doors completely. New emblems inside and out, new seats and upholstery, door panels, headliner, visors, package tray, carpet, new Magnum 500 wheels with real original ford center caps and new tires. A new 1965 Ford “look” shift lever for the t-5 transmission. The alternator was converted to electronic control instead of the voltage regulator. SS disc brakes were installed on the front for a true stop.

This is the text of the original owners eBay ad: 2 door hardtop. Factory A/C with modernized compressor, power steering, numbers matching 289 V8, completely blue printed, by professional Ford Engineer, J R Akin of Ft. Lauderdale. Block was lined and bored and squared, decked and bored .030 with 10.5 compression ratio Pistons for unleaded gas and brass freeze plugs. Cylinder heads are completely ported and polished with screw in solid rocker arm studs. The cam shaft was specially ground for this engine to maintain torque through the the power band, solid lifters. Intake manifold was ported to match the heads and runs a 4010 series 600 Holly. Balanced, rods, crankshaft, Pistons. (Crank and cam were converted to a 351 Ford timing firing order) < my note.

Ignition is a real Ford (Shelby) Hi Po 289 dual point distributor with advance curve to match the camshaft profile. Rebuild was $5K. Also, heavy duty 3 core radiator. Heavy duty custom made driveshaft balanced and larger universal joints for strength. The big Ford rear axel with 3.55 posi-traction gears. All the dash parts were sent out to be recolored and chromed. Custom car cover. Historical records, receipts, service records, factory brochures, original bill of sale. Original wheels and hub caps will also go with the car.
End

Me: I don’t know what some of that stuff means ie. Blocked, blue printed, but it was in the ad. Both “Bob” and I put out heart and wallet into this car. So it’s had a pretty charmed life, getting the best of the best since day 1. I have a folder of receipts from Bob since 1965, and a folder from me starting in 2006. Way, way too many to photograph individually, but if your local or would like to go through them we can do that.
Other: The bucket seats are from a 1968 Mustang, ivy gold. Rear air shocks are new. New front coil springs are included. All documentation is included. A/C is very cold, heater hot. New steering box, not rebuilt, for power steering. Radio is standard AM and sounds perfectly vintage. That’s it on the sound system, one center speaker in the dash. The FX hood is in perfect condition and has been covered and stored in my air conditioned house. The front brakes were converted to the Stainless Steel Disc Brake system. The brakes are not power, but I would do it. The disc system is 10x better than drum, stops straight and clean. Another $550. The exhaust is comprised of Doug’s YA headers, and a full custom bend exhaust system with tuned to the engine mufflers and chrome tips. Also, new headliner and door panels.

GM likely has a “Raiders of the Lost Ark”-style warehouse full of forgotten artifacts from the company’s century-plus in business. All the Chevrolet production records? In there, probably. Harley Earl’s frozen head? Stuffed away back there too. And right between them, maybe, are all the hundreds if not thousands of Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild models that boys across the country sold to GM during the decades-long run of the contest. As Dean’s Garage noted this week, the models are collectively one of the greatest missing pieces of GM history.

* Anybody can throw together some “inspirational” quote-laden image and throw it out on the Internet: Take for instance the Henry Ford quote I slapped together in less then a minute here using a Creative Commons image and a half-remembered, unresearched quote. (It’s actually “History is more or less bunk,” from a 1916 Chicago Tribune interview.) Mac’s Motor City Garage took a look this week at other unresearched, misattributed, out-of-context and outright fabricated quotes from automotive history that too many people take as gospel.

* In the United States, the four-door hardtop petered out in the Sixties and Seventies, but as Aaron Severson at Ate Up With Motor showed us this week, the Japanese carmakers kept the bodystyle alive for decades afterward.

* We know that Ben Smith, the originator of the Ford Skyliner retractable hardtop, tried it out on both the Continental Mark II and on Ford Mustangs, but the design also made its way to at least one other 1960s Ford vehicle, the Australian Falcon. Curbside Classic has more on the car.

* Finally, probably one of the most unremarkable features of any car, the glovebox, does have a history of its own, as Patrick Smith related this week.

No, this 1962 Ford Falcon for sale on Hemmings.com isn’t some sort of original-paint survivor. No, it doesn’t have a sleeper V-8 under the hood. No, it’s not some sort of oddball export model once owned by the prince of Indiana. Rather, it’s probably something much less common: a thoroughly restored example of probably the most basic, proletarian transportation one could find in the United States in the early 1960s. From the seller’s description:

One of the finest examples of a Ford Falcon coupe available. Only a person who loves Falcons would go to the time and expense to do such an original style restoration. This particular Falcon was restored by an enthusiast in Florida. There is easily $20K+ in just the restoration; parts/labor. The original color of champagne exterior is rare to see, let alone the two-door coupe in original, ‘time warp’ condition. The car has universal appeal, and drives like a dream. It actually can carry six people, and a trunkful of stuff. All parts are available, and the simplicity of the car is what makes it so appealing. Some other details: full, bare metal repaint in original rare Champagne color. Complete, new interior; new seat foam, upholstery, carpet, dynamat-type sound deadening, padded dash, restored steering wheel, iPod connection for music in glovebox. Chassis restoration, including suspension, brakes, steering components. New fuel tank. All chrome, rechromed. 13-inch wheels, with new radial wide whites. 170-cu.in. six-cylinder; complete rebuild; approx 2,000 miles. New clutch. South Carolina car. Original front grille; very rare to have a ’62 grille, since most have not survived.

Similar to the Monte Carlo rally Falcon that came up for sale a couple of years ago, this 1964 Ford Falcon for sale on Hemmings.com has plenty of rally history, including a couple of runs on La Carrera Panamericana, and is set up not as a dust-gathering museum piece, wasting its potential by sitting static, but as a race-ready car, with all of its FIA paperwork and go-fast parts in order. From the seller’s description:

A race/rally car with FIA papers, extremely lightweight with legitimate fiberglass fenders, front hood, doors, rear deck lid and bumpers. Car raced in Europe and won the Nurbergring and Hamburg among other places. This is Bill Shanahan’s rally car, which placed second in the Carrera Panamericana Historic C in 2008, first in Historic C in 2009 and first in the Classic Division of the Targa Newfoundland in 2010.

The car comes with a complete set of spares, including front and rear suspension, transmission (T10), two 305-cubic-inch Ford race prepared/rally engines. Also included is a fully developed six-cylinder 4.5-liter Ford engine, which qualifies to run in Historic B in the Carrera Panamericana, all of the FIA spec pieces including a 289 FIA engine and the original suspension parts. The suspension parts of the Carrera/Targa car have been significantly strengthened given the difficult road conditions in those rallies at high speeds. Finally, the car comes with a complete set of molds to build, if necessary, fiberglass fenders, hood, doors and trunk. The car has not been raced since 2011 due to owner business commitments; it has been continually track tested and is race ready.

Forty-five years of regular use anywhere on this planet will take its toll, even in California, where we East Coasters like to imagine cars naturally remain pristine no matter what. And, indeed, as we can see from the photos, this California black-plate 1969 Ford Falcon Futura station wagon for sale on Hemmings.com has taken a lickin’, but keeps on a-tickin’, rust-free and in running, driving condition. From the seller’s description:

302 V8, C4 automatic transmission, I’ve owned this car since 1997 and made many improvements: rebuilt heads, rebuilt carb., new wheel bearings, brakes, brake cylinders, master cylinder, water pump, hoses, rebuilt radiator, fuel pump, flushed fuel tank, electronic ignition, good tires. I have extra parts including hood, tailgate, bumpers, grill. Yes a few scratches and small dents, but this car is solid with no rust problems, great American iron. This car is licenced and has current tags with the desireable black California plates and would make a great surf rod or Dad & Son project. I’ve driven this car coast to coast twice and wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.

The edges may be yellowed, but the message remains the same. Black-and-white or color, hard or soft sell, old magazine ads of your favorite car (or cars) do more than just simply pitch a product. They capture a moment in history, however stage-set and idealized it might be. The Art Deco 1930s, the jet-age 1950s, the horsepower-fueled 1960s, the compact austerity of the 1970s… ads exemplify their time. Not just because they are of their time, but because they want to capture the situation of the moment and use those criteria to help sell you a car. They become part of the zeitgeist of the era that your favorite car was built in.

There are probably ads for your favorite car that you’ve never seen, and for plenty of reasons. So discovering new ads for old cars seems like an odd pursuit… yet it can be done.

Of course, buff-book readers know lots of the ads for their favorite performance cars, but some car companies ran multiple campaigns in the United States simultaneously: Witness Pontiac’s evocative, image-heavy Art Fitzpatrick/Van Kaufman color illustrations versus a simple, stark, studio-shot piece. Magazines specializing in fleet management would have their own ads on base models, emphasizing durability and cost to run.

The Big Three also advertised in magazines like Time and National Geographic, often with completely different ads for the same cars. Time readers might be more interested in pricing and economy, for example, while NatGeo ads would be more geared toward traveling in comfort. (National Geographic also produced an English-language version of the magazine for Benelux countries in Europe, which came with a whole different set of ads, though the content of the magazine itself remained identical.)

Magazines like Ebony ran parallel Big Three campaigns, utilizing ethnic models to shift the same product. Magazines specializing in fleet management would have their own ads on base models, emphasizing durability and cost to run. Though few and far between in our experience, ladies’ magazines (Redbook, Ladies’ Home Journal and the like) also run car ads – frequently for station wagons, with the emphasis on shopping and shuttling the expanding familial brood to and fro with a minimum of difficulty.

Many American cars were sold in foreign countries, and their ads were more than just carbon copies of American ad campaigns. Mexico and Canada had their own campaigns for the early Mustang, for example. And some American cars were assembled and sold overseas: Fords in Australia and Brazil, for example, or Ramblers and Chevelles in South Africa. Every country has their own language and their own magazines; they are worth pursuing.

And they even trace the history of publishing. Marvel at color ads taking over for black-and-white as early as the 1930s, and even earlier. See how photography gradually took over for line drawings in the 1950s. Recall that Life magazine ceased publication in late 1972; their gloriously oversized, framable artwork ads largely petered out before the launch of the 1973 models. But that leaves models from the 1920s to the dawn of the 1970s intact and ready to be framed. The NatGeo-sized ads are colorful but small; they remain a delightful addition to any enthusiast’s collection.

In terms of value, it’s hard to say: online auction sites are choked with $5 and $6 ads, nicely bagged up with an acid-free cardboard backing, so chasing them is less about finding a piece you’re going to retire on than it is about expanding your knowledge about the history of your favorite car – even if that history is in a language you can’t read.

Cars like this 1965 Ford Falcon Futura convertible for sale on Hemmings.com are the meat and potatoes of the old car hobby. Easy enough to get into, dead simple to wrench on and find parts for, they’re a relatively affordable way to just enjoy owning and driving an old car without worrying much about whether it’s going to win awards or constitute a major investment come buying/selling time. So who cares if it’s modified if it’s also going to generate some enjoyment for its owner? From the seller’s description:

I’m selling my father’s ’65 Falcon Futura V8 convertible, maroon with custom 2-tone maroon and black interior. It went through a mild restoration in the mid ’90s. Over the past several years we revamped all of the mechanical items, and went further with the cosmetics. Our goal for this car was to have a tremendously reliable, fun driver that shows well at cruise nights and parades. The top goes up and down smoothly with no issues. This Falcon has never been in an accident. The frame is very solid with no sagging. The door gaps are uniform top to bottom and the doors close with minimal effort.

Original Futura, not a conversion. Power steering. Power brakes with front discs and dual-bowl master cylinder. Power convertible top (black). Pertronix electronic ignition. 94,xxx miles

An enormous amount of work has been done to this Falcon to make it a great looking car and a worry-free driver. It’s not a number-matching garage queen, and it’s not an asphalt-shredding hot rod. It’s just what my dad and I wanted. When he retired to New Mexico this car lost its garage and he asked me to sell it. I kept it for two more years but don”t drive it enough. We’re not trying to get all of our money out of it – who could? – and welcome respectful tire kickers. Naturally, the new owner will get a full tank of gas and a fresh oil change with filter, and all of the extra small parts on hand.

While General Motors, Ford, and to a certain extent Chrysler seem monumentally large in American automotive history, we’re only seeing a part of a global whole when looking at those companies’ roles in their home markets, a fact that becomes painfully obvious the more time we spend looking at the photostream of a Flickr member named Michael (IFHP97). While not exclusively dedicated to advertisements for GM and Ford’s efforts in foreign lands, those ads make for some interesting viewing.

Take, for example, the Ranger, above. A brand developed in the late 1960s for South Africa, similar to how GM developed Holden for Australia as a sort of home-grown car brand, the left-hand-drive example shown certainly wasn’t offered in right-hand-drive South Africa. That’s because Rangers eventually made their way to Europe – specifically to the Swiss and Belgian markets – for much of the 1970s. Despite the separate brand, they still used Opel Rekord bodies and (at least in Europe) Opel four-cylinder engines.

Holden is perhaps the most-recognized GM offshore brand here in the States, especially in the last decade, after GM turned to Holden to develop the Pontiac GTO, G8, and Zeta-platform cars. Here we see the Holden HT Monaro GTS, which debuted in June 1969 and could be had with a 350-cu.in. small-block V-8. Lest one think that all of GM’s overseas efforts used bespoke brands, we also see the South African 1974 Chevrolet Kommando (a rebadged version of the Holden Kingswood) and the Argentine 1974 Chevrolet 400 Super Sport (a facelifted version of the 1960s Chevy II).

No context on this Spanish-language Ford International brochure from 1962, though it’s interesting to see Ford’s German Taunus, British Consul, and American Falcon side by side. Also interesting to note the difference in marketing strategies: GM with its proliferation of brands, and Ford remaining Ford just about wherever Ford went.

And finally, again no context on this circa-1980 Japanese ad for the Fox-body Mustang and Mercury Cougar XR-7. Gotta wonder how well these two sold in Japan.

As originally purchased, this 1962 Ford Falcon for sale on Hemmings.com – like pretty much every other Ford Falcon built – was considered nothing more than a daily driver, something rock simple and inexpensive and certainly not to be glorified as a collector car. And as we see from the photos and description, it could very well fill that exact same role today, more than 50 years later. From the seller’s description:

This car is truly rust free top to bottom inside and out. The original trim and moldings are all there and in great shape. The car runs and drives very nice and reliably, all the gauges and lights work and the glass is perfect. It has a new factory fuel tank, original 170 six and a fordomatic transmission and either of them leak a drop. The brake are just as nice too. The transmission shifts perfect and the paint is still as smooth as glass. It was owned by a doctors grandmother and he bought it from her to go to school back in the day. It was a California car and a Montana car and there are two mathching Callifornia plates on the car so it can be licenced with the old plates. The car makes you feel like it is 1962 when you drive it.

* When C.J. Titterington bought his 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Z06, it was just a beat-up race car, but he stuck with it over the years, restoring and refining it into the black beauty it is today. Rick Tavel at CorvetteBlogger.com has the tale.

* In Argentina, the ubiquitous Ford Falcon came to be associated with the repressive Peron dictatorship for their role as car of choice for disappearing subversives. The Driving Enthusiast Blog has more on that dark history.

* John Fitch didn’t have too many cars in his personal collection, but it appears that at least one has been sold off already – the Consulier GTP that we had a chance to drive when visiting with Fitch before he died. The Street Peep spotted it in Long Island, now for sale with a six-figure price tag. Makes one wonder where the Phoenix is.

* Dan Stoner at Autoculture relayed the info this week that Anthony Castaneda, one of the catalysts for the retro-rod/rat rod movement, died in a car crash last weekend.

* Finally, Ronan Glon at Ran When Parked came across this abandoned Impala somewhere outside Salt Lake City, Utah. We’re guessing this one didn’t run when it was parked there and won’t ever run again.